Where is Krekemia?

Hello, I'm new to the forum. I live in Sweden and have recently discovered that I have Scottish ancestors. In 1629 John (Hans) Kinnemont (or Kinninmundt) moved to Sweden to become a merchant. According to Swedish records he was born in 1608 at Krekemia, "not far from Edinburgh".

I would be grateful if anyone knows the location (and present name) of Krekemia?

A quick look on both Scotland's Places and Scotland's People come up with no hits. The closest name was from the will section on Scotland's People
Kinnimond, John
16/5/1583
in Dundee
testament dative & inventory
Brechin Commissary Court
CC3/3/1

It takes 10 credits to view the document, and may not tell you much.

I'm going to guess that Krekemia would be a farm or residence, and the spelling is a variation of something Gaelic. That's just a guess, which may take a little time to sort out. I can give it a look later today, if someone else doesn't figure it out in the meantime.

I can't help you directly with Krekemia, though I do wonder if the first part is meant to be Kirk---, which is a common element in Scottish place names. (It means 'church'.)

Are you familiar with the Scotland's People website - https://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/ This gives access to the majority of old Scottish records, though obviously the further back you go, the less likely some are to have survived.

Looking for births/baptisms there in the early 1600s, the commonest variant of the name seems to be Kinninmonth, and it was mainly clustered around Edinburgh and Kirkcaldy. You can search for names beginning with 'Kin-' to bring in most of the variants, but there are also a few beginning 'Kyn-'. There are also a large number of wills for the spelling Kynnynmonth from that period.

One thing that would be helpful is if you can give us the names of any family members who might have travelled to Sweden with John/Hans, eg was he married, did he have children, etc? If we can find any of them in the Scottish records, that could be a big step towards finding him.

Hello, I'm new to the forum. I live in Sweden and have recently discovered that I have Scottish ancestors. In 1629 John (Hans) Kinnemont (or Kinninmundt) moved to Sweden to become a merchant. According to Swedish records he was born in 1608 at Krekemia, "not far from Edinburgh".
I would be grateful if anyone knows the location (and present name) of Krekemia?

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I may be wrong but I suspect Krekemia may refer to Loch-gellie (now called Lochgelly, Fife - 2 miles north west of Cowdenbeath), or possibly to Craig Hall, Teasses Mill, near Ceres, Fife.

I've done a bit of digging around and I've found 2 good sources.

Robert SIBBALD, The history, ancient and modern, of the sheriffdoms of Fife and Kinross. Cupar 1803.

SETON (p.588) says: “Sibbald informs us that ' on an eminence to the north of Lochgellie, is the house of Easter Lochgellie, one of the seats of Sir Alexander Murray of Melgum (Melgund), of the family of Philiphaugh, by his marrying (Grissel) the heiress of Kinninmonth ; for after the Barons of Kinninmonth sold Craighall, they bought an estate here, one part of which was anciently called Kinninmonth, and is now the property of Lord Minto.” The same writer also states that “ Craighall, the seat of Sir Thomas Hope, the chief of that name, belonged anciently to the Kynninmonds, and one of the baronies is named Kynninmond. It was purchased from the family of Kynnimond by Sir Thomas Hope, Advocate to King Charles I.”.

If I’ve read this right, Sibbard seems to place Kinnimonth near the modern Lochgelly and we know Craighall or Craig Hall is near the village of Ceres (search for Teasses Mill on Google Maps and you’ll see both mentioned - + see https://canmore.org.uk/site/33017/craighall-castle ).

This is all a bit complex but I think there’s something in it. Best of all would be to follow this up from SETON> “An interesting account of the family of Kynynmond will be found in Martin of Clermont's Genealogical Collections in the Advocates' Library, which deduces the descent from Elizeus de Kynnynmond…. George Seytoun of Carrestoun is mentioned in a complaint of Walter Kinnimonth of Callinche and the Sheriff-Deputes of Fife, in the year 1617, against David Kinnimonth of Craighall and others, for forcible resistance to a decree of ejectment”. Callinche is now called Callange and is close to Ceres - see

Code:

https://www.scottish-places.info/towns/townfirst9026.html

I’m fairly certain that when it says “not far from Edinburgh” it’s actually implying that Krekemia is in the same region as Edinburgh, not that it’s geographically very close. He’s only talking about where ancient/aristocratic families had settled and isn’t referring to where ordinary folk lived.

The Kinnemonds seem to have lived in Fife. I've seen a place called Calensh mentioned. I will look into this.

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Published by Glasgow University, The Place-Names of Fife is in 4 volumes and lists variants of a place's name over the centuries. Volume 2 has entries mentioning Kinninmonth (and variants) in at least 2 different places (there may be others) - viz:

Kinninsmount. A couple of evenings ago I came across the most marvellous digital map on the National Library of Scotland maps site. It is William Roy's Military Survey of Scotland 1747-1755, known as 'The Great Map'.

Anyway, the reason it's interesting is that digging down very deep into it I've found the location of a place called Kinninsmount which might be relevant to what we're looking for. I've lined up the location in the reference below and you should be able to zoom in to Kinninsmount itself. Although the map is 100 years later than when John Kinnemont may have been associated with it, I suspect that places, as opposed to names, will not have changed very much over a century in such a relatively uninhabited part of the country.

It's worth noting that Kinninsmount is close to the village of Seerus (which is obviously Ceres) and just a very short distance to the south-west is a village called Cullinch which is a variant of Callange and could well be the Calensh which you mention in post 11 above.

Thanks Flook, this is a very interesting map. Although the Kinnemonds definitely were (are?) based in Fife, I've came across this source

Code:

https://wc.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=REG&db=hca8&id=P13050

which places Krekemia in Midlothian ... (which probably included Edinburgh in those days). I will look closely both at Fife and Midlothian on the map but I will need luck to find something. Maybe Krekemia is a misinterpretation of a name beginning in Crew- or Craig- or something?

There are many bits and pieces of information on the Kinnemonds but also lots of missing links so it's hard to get the whole picture. All the information may not be completely accurate. The family history doesn't seem to have been completely researched. The book mentioned in Seton (post no 10), Genealogical Collections, doesn't seem to be available electronically. If I ever come to Edinburgh again I will try to get a chance to study it ...

Thanks Flook, this is a very interesting map. Although the Kinnemonds definitely were (are?) based in Fife, I've came across this source

Code:

https://wc.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=REG&db=hca8&id=P13050

which places Krekemia in Midlothian ... (which probably included Edinburgh in those days). I will look closely both at Fife and Midlothian on the map but I will need luck to find something. Maybe Krekemia is a misinterpretation of a name beginning in Crew- or Craig- or something?

Click to expand...

Looking into the page you mention, a lot of the sources seem to be online trees, so treat it with caution.

As for where Krekemia is/was, I suspect that they've latched on to the idea that it was "not far from Edinburgh", and because Edinburgh is in Midlothian, they've assumed that Krekemia is too.

In fact, if you click on the Pedigree link at the top of that page you'll see that John/Hans is said to descend from Clan Kinninmonth. Follow the link to the clan, and you'll see that they are said to be from Craighall, Ceres.

(Incidentally, 'Krek-' does now seem to me more likely to represent 'Craig-' than 'Kirk-', which I originally suggested. I don't know why I didn't think of it at the time. )